Coolhandgoose's 55Gal

[coolhandgoose]

Hi guys,

I've decided to ditch my pellets and skimmer combo and redesign my plumbing to accomodate a scrubber.
My main reasons for doing this are that I'm not sure if I have dino's or cyano, either way my sand bed is disgusting and brown and looks snotty with bubbles. I'm hoping that by creating a scrubber it will outcompete any nuissance algae in the display tank and allow for some awesome coral growth which has been stagnant as of late.

I kind of jumped head first into cutting the slot in the pipe without measuring my flow first. It was fairly easy since I just clamped the pipe to a 2x4 and used a plunge router with a 1/8" bit and a guide to cut it nice and straight (well as straight as the 2x4). So I'm going to figure out how much flow I have coming from my return line and cut the slot to length from there using the 1 inch per 35gph rule. Will I need to create some type of backup in case the slot gets clogged?

I'm planning on it being lit from both sides. I have two of those home depot silver tin work lights with 27k soft light cfl's.

Screen size. Once I figure out how wide the slot will be, length will next. The display is 55gal, with about 25 gallons in the sump, so should I be creating about an 80 square inch screen? I seem to recall that you want the bottom of the screen to be just touching the water as well.

Thanks for any assistance!

[kotlec]

There is a very nice FAQ taht very well answers all your questions. Feeding is a key factor here not tank volume.

[coolhandgoose]

The new guidelines seem really small. So if I feed only 1 cube a day, which is about right, I only need a 3x4" screen and 12 watts of lighting power?

[SantaMonica]

Yes, 6 real watts on each side. You could probably go up to 10 watts.

[coolhandgoose]

Okay well I'll check out my flow rate tomorrow to see how much I'm getting from the return line. Is it okay to go bigger? I'm just thinking if I need say a six inch slot, I'd like to do a screen that's 6x6. This would be triple the requirement, could I do 36 watts of lighting for 9 hours and still get roughly the same result?

[SantaMonica]

No, bigger only grows a thinner layer, which never grows out from the screen because there is not enough nutrients to build the algae "ladders". So you never get the long green hairs.

[coolhandgoose]

Thanks for the info. I think I'll redesign it so I use a mj1200 for the flow instead of the overflow which will probably be way too much. Since I'm only feeding on average one cube of emerald entree or Pacifica plankton I'm going to go for the 3x4 screen. Does anyone have any experience using an mj1200? Any major head loss issues by pumping it up about 20 inches? I wonder if it's too much flow I can just add a ball valve with some kind of overflow.

[coolhandgoose]

So here is the scrubber with about a 3x5 screen. It's only lit on one side at the moment since one of the lamps I bought is short circuiting. I'm using an mj1200 pump, flow seems pretty good. The lights are 9 watts.

Scrubber, with an adult beverage for size comparison


In the water

[SantaMonica]

Consider switching to side-reflectors that hang down.

[coolhandgoose]

Not sure what those are